NCAA Athletes Are Receiving Their EA Sports Likeness Settlements

It’s a good day for former NCAA athletes who have appeared in EA Sports titles in the past, as their checks from the $40 million settlement have started to arrive.

Anyone who appeared in one of Electronic Arts’ NCAA Football or NCAA Basketball titles from 2003 to 2014 were eligible to receive a payment. This is due to EA Sports using the likenesses of student-athletes who were not compensated for their involvement. ESPN business reporter Darren Rovell reported that the average check is around $1,750.

Former University of Tennessee football defensive back Byron Moore shared the news of his settlement via Twitter. He tweeted out “Thank you EA Sports and NCAA,” and included a photo of the letter.

Non-surprisingly, Byron’s tweet is being met with a lot of backlash from gamers. One user sarcastically thanked the former Vol for “ruining video games because of your greed.” For what it’s worth, Moore seems to be taking the hateful comments in stride responding with some laughing emojis.

The likeness issue ended up causing the end of EA Sports’ popular college sports series, as NCAA Football 14 was the last game to bear the official logo of the collegiate regulation association. The football series had been a yearly release for the publisher since 1993’s Bill Walsh College Football. Unrelated to the lawsuit, EA had previously discontinued their NCAA Basketball series after the release of NCAA Basketball 10.

It’s nice to see that these student-athletes, most of which never made a living playing professional sports, are seeing payment for their likenesses being used. It’s only fair as gamers were buying games to play as players like Tim Tebow, not a quarterback that just happened to share his height, weight, and jersey number.

Tyler has enjoyed video games, both large and small, ever since he was a child with a Sega Genesis controller in hand. When he isn’t playing through strange retro games like Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular, he can be found meditating under a waterfall to grow his beard or eating pizza. Probably the latter.